Mubarak’s Harsh Tactics Reproduced by Morsi & Islamic Brotherhood

The warrant Egypt’s public prosecutor’s office issued this morning for Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s satirical Television personality, is another glaring example of Mohamed Morsi and the Islamic Brotherhood he leads silencing the opposition and stifling freedom of expression. Talaat Ibrahim, the public prosecutor has taken great liberties in calling for the arrests of dissidents. Last week the New York Times reported Ibrahim “ordered the arrest of five anti-Islamist activists on charges that they had used social media to incite violence against the Muslim Brotherhood.” Today the same powers of suppression have been directed at a new target and there is no reason to suppose that targets will not abound as Egypt’s “moderate” Islamic Brotherhood continues to consolidate power.

When Mubarak was deposed in Egypt’s revolution two years ago his military and security apparatus responsible for the most violent forms of suppression against dissenters before and during the revolution was, rather than being dismantled, absorbed into the new political regime of Morsi. Now the same political machine Egyptians initially rose in opposition against has reproduced itself using the detested military and security infrastructure left behind after Mubarak’s overthrow. In this way the so called moderates have piggy-backed on the shoulders of the opposition and betrayed the revolution by using the same methods to suppress dissenters like Youssef.

The classic uniformity of revolution illustrated in Crane’s Anatomy of Revolution that the new regime eventually begins to resemble the same government resisted in the first place holds true in Egypt today. That “moderates ultimately come to betray the revolution by using the same methods to suppress the extremists as the old” reveals itself for what it is, another uniformity of revolution. The public prosecutors issuing of Youseff’s arrest warrant can be seen as nothing other than the work of a functionary employing the same harsh tactics against dissent used by previous authoritarian regimes.